Kiwi-British soprano Catherine Hooper is a graduate of the Royal College of Music and the universities of Cambridge and St Andrews. Catherine won third prize and the Tait Memorial Trust Prize in the 2025 Joan Sutherland Richard Bonynge Bel Canto Award. She has previously been an Opera Prelude Young Artist, SongEasel Young Artist, OperaUpClose Associate Artist, and member of the Glyndebourne Chorus. Recent roles include Musetta (La bohème, Devon Opera), Senta (The Flying Dutchman, OperaUpClose), and Woman in the touring production for soprano and harp, We Two Were Lovers  – The Sea and I (OperaUpClose). While studying at the RCM, Catherine covered the Queen of the Night (Die Zauberflöte) with the RCM Opera Studio and performed extracts from various roles in opera scenes, including Countess (Le Nozze di Figaro), Donna Anna (Don Giovanni) and Alcina. She has since reprised the role of the Queen of the Night with the Royal Opera House Create & Sing Programme.

 

During her undergraduate degree at the University of St Andrews, Catherine was heavily involved in the musical life of the university and town and graduated with the Cedric Thorpe-Davie Prize for contributions to music. She sang regularly with Byre Opera in St Andrews, including as Vixen Sharp-Ears (The Cunning Little Vixen) and Miss Jessel (The Turn of the Screw). She also performed Belinda (Dido and Aeneas) and Lieschen in a staged performance of Bach's Coffee Cantata, both as part of the On the Rocks Festival. During her postgraduate degree at Cambridge, Catherine sang Frasquita (Carmen) with the Cambridge University Opera Society, La Musique (Les arts florissants) with Cambridge Baroque Ensemble, and Dido (Dido and Aeneas) with the Dorian Chamber Orchestra.

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Catherine has sung widely in concert and in 2024, she completed a recital tour across China with pianist Aleksandra Myslek, performing in venues such as the Wuhan Qintai Concert Hall. Catherine is particularly interested in performing music by female composers. She is a founding member of the 97 Ensemble, with whom she has performed Errollyn Wallen's song cycle Are You Worried About the Rising Cost of Funerals? in venues including the Royal Albert Hall. She commissioned and performed two new song cycles by Rebecca Nisco and Jasmine Morris for the RCM's inaugural diversity festival in 2021, and in 2018, she premiered Emily Doolittle's Conversation for soprano and chamber orchestra, funded by the Royal Society of Edinburgh, later touring this work to Orkney with the St Andrews New Music Ensemble. Catherine has also been a soloist for a number of major religious and concert works, including Fauré's Requiem, Handel's Messiah, Haydn's Nelson Mass, St John Passion (Bach), Petite messe solennelle (Rossini), and Mass in D Minor (Dvořák). Catherine has been generously supported by Help Musicians, the Open Music Foundation, the Mario Lanza Educational Foundation, and the Kathleen Trust.